CPJ testimony focuses on Russian impunity

Nina Ognianova, CPJ's Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, provided testimony to the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe on the pressing issue of impunity in journalist murders in Russia. The commission held a hearing this week on Russia's human rights record. A transcript of the testimony follows:

Chairmen Cardin and Hastings, and Members of the Commission:

Thank you for the opportunity to submit this written testimony on press
freedom in Russia ahead of
President Barack Obama's July 6-8 trip to Moscow
for a summit with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. My name is Nina Ognianova. I coordinate the Europe and Central Asia program at the New York-based Committee to
Protect Journalists, an international, independently funded organization that
defends the rights of journalist to report the news without fear of reprisal.

I will focus my testimony on the issue of impunity in journalist killings under
the present Russian leadership. Seventeen journalists have been killed in Russia in
relation to their work since 2000, CPJ research shows. In only one case have
the killers been convicted. In every case, the masterminds have gone unpunished.

This record has contributed to the spread of self-censorship in the press
corps, restricting coverage of sensitive topics such as government corruption,
organized crime, human rights violations, and unrest in the North Caucasus
region of Russia.
The public has suffered as a result, having been kept in the dark about
important issues of community, national, and international interest.

The following capsules describe the 17 journalists killed in relation to
their work:

Vladimir
Yatsina, 51, took a leave from his job with the Russian news agency
ITAR-TASS in the summer of 1999, to travel to the North
Caucasus on a freelance assignment to photograph Chechen
rebel fighters. In July of that year, while in the southern republic of Ingushetia, Magomed Uspayev, an
ethnic Chechen who had been hired as Yatsina's fixer, reportedly handed
the photographer to a criminal gang notorious for kidnapping people for
ransom. Yatsina was shot in the mountains of Chechnya the following
February, according to fellow captives who later gave public statements. Law
enforcement officials did not detain or charge Uspayev, who lived freely
in Russia for two years
after the killing before going to Sweden in 2002. It was not
until 2005 that Russian authorities placed Uspayev on Interpol's
international wanted list. The Swedish government has refused to extradite
him to Russia,
citing human rights concerns. Yatsina's killers were never prosecuted.

Igor Domnikov, 42, a
reporter and special-projects editor with Novaya Gazeta, was
bludgeoned with a hammer in the entrance to his Moscow home in May 2000. He slipped into
a coma and died on July 16 of that year. Before his death, Domnikov had
written several articles criticizing the economic policies of the Lipetsk regional
government. Seven years later, five members of a criminal gang were
convicted of the murder and sentenced to lengthy prison terms. Authorities
have yet to file charges against those accused of ordering the killing.

Eduard Markevich, 29,
founder and editor of the independent weekly Novy Reft, was shot in
the courtyard of his apartment building in the Ural Mountains town of Reftinsky on
September 19, 2001. Markevich, who had been investigating a public
employee's use of government property for private gain, had received
threats and had been previously attacked for his work. Authorities made
initial progress in the case when they detained a suspect in a vehicle
matching the description of the gunman's car. But the case was transferred
without explanation to another prosecutor's office, the investigation came
to a halt, and the suspect was released. No developments have been reported
in the case.

Natalya Skryl, 29, a
business reporter for the Rostov-on-Don newspaper Nashe Vremya, was
walking home from a bus stop in her hometown of Taganrog, an industrial
city on the Azov Sea, when at least one assailant struck her a dozen times
with a pipe or similar object on March 8, 2002. She died in a hospital the
next day. The assailant did not take money or gold jewelry from the
journalist; in fact, nothing appeared to have been stolen. Nonetheless, Taganrog
investigators classified the case as a robbery and did not explore
journalism as a motive. Skryl had written several articles on the struggle
for control of a large steel-pipe manufacturer. In the six years since
Skryl's killing, the case has been suspended and reopened several times without
evident progress.

Valery Ivanov, 32, and
Aleksei Sidorov, 31, consecutive editors of the independent
newspaper Tolyattinskoye Obozreniye in the car-manufacturing city
of Togliatti,
had exposed organized crime activities and corruption in the local government.
They were slain 18 months apart: Ivanov was gunned down on April 29, 2002,
and Sidorov was fatally stabbed on October 9, 2003. Both attacks occurred
outside their homes. Investigators asserted that a man who later died of a
drug overdose had killed Ivanov, but no evidence has been disclosed to
support the accusation. In the Sidorov case, a local welder was falsely
accused of killing the editor; that man was acquitted at trial. No further
progress has been reported in either case.

Yuri Shchekochikhin,
53, deputy editor of Novaya Gazeta, had meticulously investigated a
high-level corruption scheme when he was felled by a mysterious illness in
June 2003. The sickness caused Shchekochikhin's organs to fail, one after
another, and he died within weeks. Questionable steps followed. Hospital
authorities declared Shchekochikhin's records a "medical secret" and
sealed them from the public, including the journalist's family. A Moscow prosecutor
then lost the records, Novaya Gazeta
reported. It was not until five years later that a team of investigators
with the Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal probe into the
circumstances of Shchekochikhin's death. That case was suspended on April
6, 2009, after investigators concluded that no foul play was involved. The
medical records have yet to resurface.

Maksim Maksimov, 41, a
reporter with the St. Petersburg
weekly Gorod, who was investigating alleged corruption in the local
Interior Ministry branch, disappeared after going to meet a source on June
29, 2004. He was declared dead two years later. Witness accounts
implicated ministry officers in the disappearance, but St. Petersburg prosecutors have taken no
evident action against them. The investigation was suspended in 2008; the
family and its lawyer have not been allowed to review the case file.

Paul Klebnikov, 41, the founding editor of Forbes Russia magazine, had carried
out journalistic investigations on risky topics such as the synergy of
Russian business, politics, and organized crime; the "gangster capitalism"
of the 1990s; and the 1995 murder of television journalist Vladislav
Listyev. At least one gunman shot and killed Klebnikov, a U.S. journalist of Russian descent, as he
left his Moscow
office on July 9, 2004. Two defendants were acquitted of the murder in May
2006, in a closed trial marred by procedural violations. The Russian
Supreme Court overturned the verdict and ordered a re-trial, but the case was
indefinitely postponed in March 2007 when one of the defendants vanished.
No developments have been reported since. Authorities have yet to report
any progress in apprehending the crime's mastermind.

Pavel Makeev, 21, a
cameraman for the television station Puls in the town of Azov, was struck and killed by a car
while filming illegal drag racing on May 21, 2005. Evidence showed that
the car dragged Makeev's body 50 feet, and the driver did not apply the
brakes. Authorities classified the case as a traffic accident without
questioning witnesses. Makeev's video camera--with footage of the illegal racing--was
taken.

Magomedzagid Varisov,
54, and Telman Alishayev, 39, worked in the volatile southern republic of Dagestan. Varisov, a political
analyst for Dagestan's largest weekly, Novoye Delo, was shot and
killed near his home in the regional capital, Makhachkala, on June 28, 2005. He had
criticized people across the political spectrum--from government officials,
to federal troops, to radical organizations. Alishayev, a reporter and
host of a religious television program on the Makhachkala-based Islamic
television station TV-Chirkei, covered social issues such as education,
drug addiction, and the spread of HIV. He was gunned down near his home,
on September 2, 2008. In each case, authorities said they identified
suspects who were then killed in armed confrontations with police. No
evidence has been disclosed to support those assertions, however, and the
victims' families have told CPJ they are deeply skeptical of the findings.

Vagif Kochetkov, 31, a
political reporter for the Tula-based Molodoi Kommunar newspaper,
had written critically of business practices and organized crime in his
hometown. An attacker struck him on the head with a heavy object near his
home on December 27, 2005. He died 12 days later. Authorities classified
the case as a robbery, although Kochetkov's valuables--including a diamond
ring--were left intact. A suspect was acquitted at trial. Investigators did
not explore Kochetkov's journalism as a possible murder motive and failed
to question his colleagues in any depth.

Anna Politkovskaya,
48, a special correspondent for Novaya Gazeta, was gunned down in
her Moscow
apartment building on October 7, 2006. The internationally known
journalist had reported extensively on human rights abuses in Chechnya and throughout the conflict-ridden
North Caucasus. She had been threatened,
poisoned, and forced into exile during her career. Three men accused of
being accomplices to the murder were acquitted in February, although a
retrial has been ordered. Neither the gunman nor the masterminds have been
apprehended. The gunman fled Russia on a fraudulent
passport, according to news reports; the masterminds have not been
identified.

Ivan Safronov, 51, a
prominent military correspondent for the business daily Kommersant and
a reserve colonel in the Russian Space Force, fell to his death from a
staircase window in his Moscow
apartment building on March 2, 2007. He had just returned from a business
trip to the Middle East, where he had learned of purported sales of
Russian defense technology to Iran
and Syria.
Three days before his death, Safronov told colleagues that he had been
warned not to publish portions of the information, Kommersant
reported. The journalist had also embarrassed defense officials two months
earlier by reporting on the third consecutive test failure of the Bulava
ballistic missile. Authorities classified the death as a suicide, yet
Safronov left no note and, in the hours before his death, had made plans
with family and friends and had shopped for groceries.

Magomed Yevloyev, 37,
publisher of the independent news Web site Ingushetiya, who
uncovered official corruption and human rights abuses in Ingushetia, was
shot and killed in state custody on August 31, 2008. In an interview with
CPJ two months before his killing, Yevloyev said Ingushetia authorities
had filed more than a dozen lawsuits seeking to shut down his site. The
day of the killing, Yevloyev was detained by an Interior Ministry unit at
the airport in Magas, Ingushetia (without a valid arrest warrant, as a
court later ruled). He did not resist and was placed in an Interior
Ministry vehicle with three officers, witnesses told CPJ. Along the way,
Yevloyev was shot in the head. Authorities claimed an officer's gun went
off accidentally. A negligent homicide charge has been filed against the
officer--nephew of former Ingushetia Interior Minister Musa Medov--but the
officer has left the region and has not returned for court proceedings.
The Yevloyev family has called the trial a sham.

Anastasiya Baburova,
25, a freelance reporter for Novaya Gazeta, had covered the rise of
race-motivated crimes and the activities of neo-Nazi groups in Russia.
On January 19, 2009, a gunman shot her and prominent human rights lawyer
Stanislav Markelov in downtown Moscow,
minutes after they emerged from a press conference in which the lawyer
criticized the early release of a Russian army colonel convicted of
killing a teenage Chechen girl. Five months later, investigators have yet
to report progress in the case.

With 50 journalists
killed on the job since 1992, Russia
is the third-deadliest country in the world for journalists, CPJ research
shows. Only the conflict-ridden countries of Iraq
and Algeria
surpass this number of work-related fatalities during this period. Russia also has
one of the highest levels of impunity in journalist murders in the world (ninth
worst), according to CPJ's annually updated Impunity Index, which calculates
the number of such unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each
country's population.

This
record contrasts with stated commitments by President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime
Minister Vladimir Putin to strengthen the rule of law and protect the safety of
all Russian citizens. It also undermines Russia's standing as an
international leader. Russia
is a member of a number of international institutions, such as the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe and the
Council of Europe, and it has an influential voice in a number of others. Yet membership
and influence come with the obligation to adhere to international standards,
including the rights to life and free expression. When Russia fails to
adhere to these norms, it undermines them for all.

The
leaders of the democratic world, including President Obama, must engage their
Russian counterparts in a dialogue on the record of impunity, offer assistance
in combating the problem, and call for concrete results.